Chapter Nine

 

Not far across the blazing red riot of poppies in the valley, the late afternoon sun glinted on the fabled towers and domes of the Emerald City and sparked green fire from their prominences and angles.

Dorothy and the others were wading through the sea of red flowers, each individual satisfied to be approaching the end of their journey at last, yet each, in his or her way, just slightly disappointed too. This journey had proven to be more enjoyable than any of them had any reasonable right to expect.

An odd bond among them as a group had been established extraordinarily quickly, considering that not one of them wasn't rather a difficult personality, in his or her own right.  Personal alliances, and more besides, were also developing, and it would have been good to pursue these. But each was aware, to varying degrees, that the ultimate goal now in sight would change all these things, though for good or ill, none could have said.

However, it didn't really matter anyway, since a crash squad of Poppy Valley goons was bearing down on them all at top speed just then. And, though they did not yet know it, they would all be obliged to fight their way across the valley to the city, if they could, very soon.

Dorothy was the first to notice that they had a problem. She had seen far too many drive-bys back in Effbeeye not to recognize the driving configuration of the heavily manned half dozen hay wains speeding toward their position. She could not fail to recognize an attack pattern when she saw it.

"Oh, man, that does not look good," she barked, immediately pulling every weapon she had out of her tote bag, checking each and loading all. She raised her head to her companions. "Hostiles at three o'clock, folks. I don't think it's a reception committee."

Margot and the Lion gazed, momentarily dumbfounded, at the approaching wagons.

Finally, Margot summed up the situation eloquently. "Poppy Valley security. Shitfire. We're toast."  She sighed and concluded her assessment with a clanking, defeated shrug.

The Scarecrow, who tended to be a bit quicker on the uptake, and who thought very little of chit-chat under duress, said nothing, but immediately moved the Harpy blade he carried out of his breast pocket and into his sleeve. Then he pulled a crossbow out of his knap sack, and set about winding the hand-cranked winch and loading the bow with a pair of quarrels. Once this was done, he dropped below the level of the ripe poppy plants and began to set crossbow quarrels in the rich soil beneath, each sticking out of the ground at convenient hand height and each placed in a strategic spot. In this way, Dorothy saw, he would be able to move about within concealment as he wished, with constant access to ammunition, yet his hands would be unencumbered, since he need not carry the crossbow bolts he was pre-placing for himself. Within the space of thirty seconds, he'd placed some dozen of the bolts, and then had moved completely out of sight.

Dorothy had been in a great many jump-out squads and gun battles over the course of her somewhat checkered career, and she had often felt the disgruntled and barely controllable panic of an officer who has begun to suspect she has ignorant and/or incompetent back-up. She allowed herself one quick, grim smile of approval at the Scarecrow's very professional tactics.

Thank God he's on our side, she thought, then forgot about him completely. She turned to Margot and the Lion.

"Who can shoot?" she asked, quick. "Margot, what about you?"

Margot shook herself together and accepted a back-up .45 Dorothy always carried in her bag, even on vacation. The six hay wagons were less than an acre away.

As Dorothy showed Margot how to eject the clip and sock in a fresh one, she was also staring hard at Barney, who was looking every inch the Squeamish Lion just then.

"You're gonna have to fight, you know, Barney," she said, quietly.

"Oh, jeez, I'm not like that, really I'm not. And don't ask me to take one of those guns. I HATE loud noises."

The wagons only a half acre away now, the assorted goons and toughs and lowlife scum that rode in them becoming distinguishable as individuals as they drew closer.

"Barney, who do you think sicced this bunch of shitheads on us? I'll give you one guess, but I'll also give you a hint - he's got no face and wears a pointy hat!"

"Oh, God, don't you think I KNOW that?" Barney moaned, and covered his face with his paws. 

Margot cleared her throat, once. She was not really one to seek out a fight, but, since she was clearly in one now, she fully intended to dish out some shit. She set herself and raised her borrowed gun. She could now see the faces of the various individuals on the wagons. She noticed something odd about a goodish number of the faces she could see, and a crazy idea occurred to her. She began to turn toward Barney.

Dorothy, deciding to put the issue of Barney aside for the time being, had commanded Toto to lie down in a particularly thick poppy bush, and had told him very firmly to stay. Once she had him settled, she loaded a couple of shells into the shotgun she'd had buried at the bottom of her tote, just in case. She slung the thing, broken, over her shoulder.

"Hey, Barney," called Margot to the distressed Lion. "Can you see those guys yet? I mean, can you make them out?"

Barney, quivering, peeked out from between his paws at the approaching mob of Poppy Valley security thugs. A moment passed. His quivering came to an abrupt halt. His paws came down from his face, claws extended, and his muzzle began to wrinkle in a feline snarl of pure hatred.

"Hyenas!" he hissed, in a deadly feline growl. "I can't believe they're hiring hyenas out here! Ever-fucking . . . HYENAS . . . rrrrrRRRRRROOORRRRRRRR!!!!"

Barney the Squeamish Lion dropped into a stalking crouch that would have put the infamous man-eating lions of Tsaavo to shame and all that could be seen of him was the tip of his tasseled tail lashing furiously above the poppies.

It was a well known fact among even casual observers of animal shows on television that if there is one thing a lion (even a squeamish lion) absolutely will not tolerate, it is a hyena.  Margot suddenly felt very grateful that Judy had made her sit through all those boring animal shows once upon a time.

Carlo had recently been hiring hyenas that had been exiled from the zoo to beef up his security forces, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. They were a little unruly and had appalling table manners, it was true, but they were willing to work for next to nothing, and they all seemed to have a real feel for the work. He could not have guessed

that his small economy would prove to be such a disastrous tactical error.

Once the wagons were in her firing range, Dorothy called out in the cold, clear voice she had always employed to verbally quell criminals on the verge of a firefight.

"Hold it right there, fellas. State your business,” she took the shotgun off her shoulder, worked the pump, and leveled it at the driver of the foremost wagon to emphasize the seriousness of her feelings.

Carlo, who just happened to be that driver, felt confused. His information had been that there should be five travelers to seize. He only saw two. One was the good-looking woman he'd been told about, and, yes, she did have a gun, as advertised. But the other woman, the tin one, (not a bad looker herself, if you were into that kind of thing) was also armed. The lion he'd been told to expect was missing, and the Scarecrow, who everyone in Oz knew was most closely akin to a pack of sentient razor blades, was nowhere in sight.

Carlo chewed on a stag's tooth he habitually kept in his mouth, unaware that everyone who worked under him felt that this was a thoroughly vile habit and often made fun of him for it. He was wondering if the situation hadn't already careened out of control, even before it had properly begun.

"I think you lost, nice ladies," he said, trying on a crocodilian smile that was meant to set the two women he could see at ease.  If he could seize these two, he was thinking, perhaps he could draw the others out of cover.

"Nope," answered Dorothy, still in her overly clear you're-all-under-arrest voice. "We're not lost at all. We're going to the Emerald City. Right over there." She pointed to the nearby green skyline with her chin, never moving the barrel of the shotgun from its steady bead on Carlo's head.

"Oh, marrone, it's coincidence, heh? That's where we go too! What a luck for you two pretty ladies. We give you a ride, heh?"

"I think you ought to blow his head off, Dorothy," Margot said. "That's the most transparent line I ever heard."

"I think not," Dorothy said to Carlo. "Thanks anyhow."

"But we insists, heh? Bad element around this poppy field. Narcotico dealers! Not safe for ladies. "

"It may not be safe for anyone in a minute," Dorothy retorted. "You boys are in our way. Move aside."

"Ladies come with us. No be naughty. We insist, and we about twenty-five of us boys. You about two of you ladies."

He pulled his hay wagon several horse lengths closer to Dorothy's position, crowding her right up to the brink of full scale confrontation. One backward step on her part, Dorothy knew, and the festivities would begin. They'd probably begin anyway, she thought, glumly. She'd been through too many things like this to harbor any false hopes.

"Dorothy, I'M gonna plug him in a minute, if he doesn't stop calling us 'ladies', goddamnit," Margot said.

Before Carlo could commit yet another sexist faux pas, several things happened simultaneously.

A flash of tawny gold at the back of one of the wagons, and three hyenas shrieked their last as they were dragged away and out of sight beneath the blood red poppies.

The rest of the hyenas, in all the wagons, all sniffed the air nervously, identified a scent they all knew from their worst nightmares, and one rather high strung young one screeched "LION!!" at the top of his lungs.

The entire hyena contingent panicked and screamed in their high pitched hyena voices, creating a horrible din that blasted all coherent thoughts out of the minds of the less emotional species in the wagons. Several of the hyenas simply leapt out of the wagons and ran away.

Then several odd whizzing, hissing sounds buzzed in rapid succession, each one coming from a different location, and two leather jacketed Emerald City bikers, one wart hog from the zoo, and a winged monkey who was almost as ugly as Cordell, all collapsed, dead, crossbow bolts shot through various vital portions of their anatomies.

A short pause, and then the fat guy sitting next to Carlo in the front wagon suddenly sprouted a crossbow quarrel from his chest, right over his heart. He instantly collapsed into Carlo, three hundred pounds of newly dead meat, knocked Carlo halfway off his seat, AND caused him to accidentally swallow the stag's tooth he'd been chewing.

As Carlo choked on the tooth and tried to push the fat guy out of his way, Dorothy seized the moment and fired her shotgun directly over the heads of Carlo's team of horses. The team immediately panicked and bolted, just as Dorothy had intended they should. The wagon jolted round and bounced off toward the far east end of the poppy field, Carlo coughing wildly and desperately hanging on to the side slats to avoid being thrown off and broken at the high speed.

Confusion to the enemy, Dorothy thought with some satisfaction, and tossed her shotgun aside to pull the cutdown .45 out of her waistband.  One wagon down, plus the guy who looked to be in charge. Let's finish this.

Another pair of hyenas was seized from ambush, nothing clearly seen but a flash of golden fur and a lashing tasseled tail. The hyenas all had seen enough. They deserted en masse, running in a protective, yipping pack as far from the scene of the recent great hyena massacre as they could get.

Dorothy aimed her weapon at the driver of the second wagon, a bald fellow with a monstrously long mustache, and her voice cut through the racket of retreating hyenas like a diamond through glass.

"Didn't I ASK you people to move aside? Now, I've asked you once, nicely.  Make me ask again and we'll REALLY open up on you all, understand? What's left of you, that is. You first, Baldy, guaranteed. What do you say?"

The much reduced Poppy Valley security force did not need to confer over the matter much. 

The bald gentleman in the second wagon didn't need to confer at all. He immediately flicked the reins and turned his wagon around with dispatch and decisiveness, and sped back to the guardhouse, where he intended to jump into the safety of his bunk and hide under a blanket for the next few days.

The remaining four wagons soon followed suit, and Dorothy and her companions were left alone, victorious, upon the field.

"'You first, Baldy'!" Margot repeated to Dorothy, cracking up. "God, girl, that was GREAT! Did you see that guy turn white?"

Barney the Squeamish Lion emerged from his crouch among the poppies, standing to his full height and fastidiously licking blood off his muzzle.

"I simply hate hyenas," he said, with a toothy feline grin. "But I gotta admit, they don't taste half bad."

The Scarecrow emerged from cover a minute or two later. He'd been busy retrieving all his crossbow quarrels, minus the ones that were now imbedded in the various casualties, and thus gone for good. He'd also come upon Toto's hiding place in his search, and had tucked the blinking little lamb under his arm.

"What a pathetic showing," he snorted, setting Toto down, not a strand of straw out of place. "Pushovers. The Witch really ought to consider hiring some decent help."

Dorothy regarded her new friends. She'd never had more unusual, or more completely reliable, back-up. She wasn't sure what this said about her life back in Effbeeye, and she wasn't sure she wanted to figure it out.

"So, I guess you guys aren't all that big on law and order here in Oz?" was what she said to them, smiling.

As Dorothy smiled at her companions in Poppy Valley, a little over three leagues away, in the haunted forest, all through and all around the castle, the sustained, frenzied, enraged bellowing of one incredibly pissed off Wicked Witch pained the ears of all who heard it.

The sound of an elevated video monitor being smashed to bits was actually a pleasant contrast, so awful was the horrible screaming.